Bell Canada is launching a new corporate look tomorrow, one that promises to be … “clear, bold and instantly recognizable” …

Key to the look are three elements:

  • a new logo
  • new tag lines centred around the concept of things getting “better”
  • renamed product lines.

From what I can tell, the logo will be a nice blue “Bell” in a sans serif font (is that a Tahoma?). I always like a look that returns to simplicity and graphic clarity …

But the brand will retain an edgy and innovative feel by being sliced and diced into nearly unrecognizable graphic treatments, which will then be inserted into ad copy piece by piece.

It’s a lot like a Word Jumble or the old I Spy word game.

In an internal branding move that will never translate to the real world, these snippets are called “Bell-ements”:

“The Bell-ements are a fun and constructive way to put the Bell logo to
work in every possible way. All of our television ads actually take place on a
gigantic Bell logo while many of our print ads carry portions of the Bell
logo,” [said the senior Bell brand honcho]

As well, advertising campaigns will offer plays on the adverb “better”:

“To tie the advertising even more closely to the concept of “better” and underline the range of product and benefits Bell offers, the English campaign also makes liberal use of words ending in “er” - faster, easier, music lover, gamer, worker, talker, texter, multitasker - which was also the basis of the company’s recent advertising teaser campaign.”

In case you don’t appreciate the subtle nuance of the “er” tag, the ads will use a different coler every time things are meant to be better.

Finally, Bell has abandoned the faux futuristic names assigned to its product lines back when the big dream was to be a new media conglomerate. So, the transformation begins:

Bell Sympatico = Bell Internet

Bell ExpressVu = Bell TV

Bell Residential = Bell Home Phone

Aw hell. Why didn’t they just hire Brian Regan to do their voiceovers? Everything could be “more gooder”!

There was a great clip from the Opie & Anthony show, where Brian Regan uses the phrase “more gooder” over and over. If only I could link to it.